Trade Union Congress Policy towards union mergers: a statistical analysis, 1960-83

Abstract

This letter extends Elgar and Simpson's (1994) analysis on the working of the Bridlington Principles to the analysis of the working of TUC voluntary policy with respect to mergers among affiliated unions over the period 1960–83. Univariate analysis is applied to microdata to investigate the effectiveness of voluntary policy on mergers with respect both to the implementation and to the achievement of the underlying objectives of the policy. The results of the tests clearly show the achievement of the implementation of the policy in terms of when and how mergers occurred and the achievement of the policy objective of rationalizing the structure of affiliated unions; the results of the tests about the achievement of the policy objective of reducing competition for membership among affiliated unions are less conclusive. The results of our analysis on mergers broadly confirm Edgar and Simpson's results about the effectiveness of TUC voluntary policies.